Week 7 Mentoring, PvP (3)
"Done already? How are you the first one out?"
The stands still held nothing but Dang Gyu-young. Hong Yeon-hwa and Song Cheon-hye, who'd been matched ahead of me, had yet to emerge.
"Their matches must be dragging. Mine ended in one go — I charged the crystal straight through to the finish."
When a crystal kept getting stolen and re-stolen, its charge would cancel, reset, cancel again, and the fight had no choice but to stretch on. I, on the other hand, had sprinted the instant the match began, reclaimed the crystal, neutralized every one of Cha Hyun-ju's attempts at interference, and charged it from start to finish without a hitch. You could fairly call it a near-record time.
Dang Gyu-young rapped the seat beside her with her fingertips.
"Get over here. Let's watch your replay together."
With the first match complete, the next order of business was showing it to my mentor and reviewing it side by side.
KimHo513_ChaHyunju510_PvP_Week7.replay
I held out the crystal orb, and Dang Gyu-young checked the name written on it — her face stiffening a touch.
"...You drew Cha Hyun-ju?"
"You know her?"
"Yeah. Well — she's one of ours, technically."
Going by her equipment and the bent of her skills, she'd struck me as leaning toward the Guild Coalition, and apparently I'd guessed right. There was something oddly evasive about Dang Gyu-young's manner, though — a hint of something being held back. I decided to ask about that later and focus on the replay for now.
Eyes fixed on the orb, Dang Gyu-young murmured as if to herself.
"You both found the crystal at almost the same moment."
"Yes."
That was when it first occurred to me that Cha Hyun-ju was no pushover. Even granting that I'd located the crystal on instinct honed by experience, the time she'd taken to arrive hadn't been far off mine at all. She seemed to possess some manner of search-related skill.
The replay rolled on, and inside the orb, Cha Hyun-ju and I began closing in for melee.
Cha Hyun-ju whirled her twin blades in one unbroken chain of strikes — and I, seeming at times about to be caught, slipped or parried every last one in the end.
"Right," Dang Gyu-young said, tone bored. "Like anything could actually hit you."
If the full-power onslaught of a third-year club president like Dang Gyu-young couldn't even graze me, a first-year like Cha Hyun-ju hardly stood a chance.
Wham! Inside the orb, Cha Hyun-ju took a Wind Force head-on and went cartwheeling through the air.
"Aigoo."
Dang Gyu-young let out a soft lament, her gaze turning abruptly tender with pity — she seemed to be feeling a kinship of sorts.
Wham!
A second Wind Force sent Cha Hyun-ju sailing far, far away.
Dang Gyu-young tore her eyes from the orb and looked at me.
"Kim Ho, you are a genuinely terrible human being."
"I have to survive too, you know. There's a limit to how long a person can just dodge."
"Still — did you really need to send her flying twice?"
"Honestly? No, I didn't."
I admitted it without a fight. The second one had, in fair measure, been meant to make her angry.
Shreeeeak!
At long last, Cha Hyun-ju shifted her weapon into a bow and began loosing arrows.
Dang Gyu-young let out another gasp of admiration.
"Wow, that's seriously impressive. I'd wager that's only the third time since enrollment she's ever pulled that bow out?"
Word was, win or lose, Cha Hyun-ju normally fought with daggers alone. The bow saw daylight only briefly, in private bouts against opponents strong enough to rank as rising-star tier. She must have been boiling with fury indeed, if a nobody like me — not even a rising star — got the honor of being opponent number three.
And yet something in Dang Gyu-young's words snagged on me: the part about dueling 'opponents on par with rising stars.'
Abruptly, I remembered what Shin Byung-cheol had said back during the Placement Exam.
"We've got one more kid on our side who's scary good with a bow. She only ever used daggers — and even then went two and one."
"So she's that archer prodigy, then."
Dang Gyu-young seemed to weigh it for a moment, then answered with a shrug.
"What's the point of hiding it at this stage? It's her."
"That explains a lot."
Her skill with the twin daggers had been quite respectable, and with the bow, better still. That finisher especially — flooding the field with guided rounds, then threading a single covert shot through the gaps — had been superb.
Just then, Dang Gyu-young glanced away from the orb to check a message.
"Right on cue — contact."
"From Cha Hyun-ju?"
"No, her mentor."
"What is it?"
"She's asking you to run this replay in private mode."
Figured as much. Rage had trampled reason and she'd drawn the bow in the heat of the moment, but with the match over and her head cooling, rational thought was creeping back in. Every ounce of skill she'd so carefully buried was now sitting in a replay, preserved in full. Winning would have softened the blow; having your full ability laid bare to all the world in a loss was damage beyond measuring. So she'd apparently gone begging to her mentor.
For my part, the slower my own abilities came to light, the better. Still, as ever, I pushed back once — using the replay as my bargaining chip.
"Hmm. I do need the points, though."
"Oh, come on. Do my reputation a favor here. Please? They're offering compensation on their end, too."
"Mm..."
When I kept up the pretense of deliberating, Dang Gyu-young prodded my cheek lightly with her index finger, poking and poking to hurry me along.
I let her stew a little longer, then named my price.
"Then I'll run it privately — and in exchange, you'll be helping me train hard this week as well."
"Training... you mean, uh, the wind magic?"
"Naturally."
Dang Gyu-young's face crumpled. The trauma wind magic had planted in her heart was such that last week, the goblins had stood in as my training's sacrificial lambs instead. But that avenue was closed this week — for the mentoring event bonus, I needed her participation by any means necessary.
"..."
The tide had turned. Dang Gyu-young sank into grave deliberation while I — unable to quite bring myself to poke her cheek in return — simply stared at her. She mulled, sneaking glances at my face; mulled again, sneaking more glances; and at last, as though she couldn't win against me, accepted my proposal.
"Ugh, fine. But understand — this is seriously the last time."
Just then, Song Cheon-hye and Hong Yeon-hwa came tumbling out of the teleportation array one after the other. Their expressions were reasonably bright — both appeared to have won.
Only Gwak Ji-cheol was nowhere in sight, so I asked Dang Gyu-young about it.
"Where's Gwak Ji-cheol?"
"He went in after you. Might take a while?"
I nodded, unbothered. He'd come out soon enough, win or lose.
'I'm screwed. Of all the days, starting Monday, no less...'
Gwak Ji-cheol bewailed his rotten luck.
His opponent from the Week 1 PvP — the one who had sent him to an early grave with a single sniper shot — and now the matchmaker had paired him with Seo Ye-in all over again.
He exhaled an irritated sigh.
'Well. Might as well give it a go. What choice is there?'
He could hardly forfeit before the thing even started. And in truth, part of him welcomed the chance at a grudge rematch. He had trained without pause and absorbed his mentoring, steadily cultivating his skill all this while. The him of now was not the him of then, and his odds had climbed accordingly.
Besides — a look around revealed a forest lush with greenery. Of all the random terrains, he had drawn the single most favorable map for a wood-and-earth mage. All told, he figured he had a real fighting chance.
The instant the match began, Gwak Ji-cheol summoned several gnomes — low-grade earth spirits — and spread them abroad, the better to comb for the crystal that much sooner. He had been sprinting blindly in one direction when one of the gnomes sensed something. He wheeled toward it at once, and sure enough, the crystal swam into view.
'Good start.'
Then came a rustle, and Seo Ye-in pushed through the undergrowth into the open. With the crystal between them, their gazes locked dead-on.
"..."
"..."
The thought that flickered through Gwak Ji-cheol's head in that moment had nothing whatever to do with the match: damn it all, she really was disgustingly pretty. That was followed by the grievance of not grasping what was so great about Kim Ho that she hung off his arm every single day — and only after cursing Kim Ho out at length in the privacy of his own skull did he snap back to his senses.
He was in the middle of a PvP match, wasn't he.
Gwak Ji-cheol broke into a run to seize the crystal first.
"..."
Seo Ye-in, for her part, showed not the slightest intent to run. She simply raised the gun she'd been letting dangle and leveled it at him. Except it was neither the pistols nor the rifle she'd wielded before —
'An assault rifle?'
Rat-tat-tat-tat! Seo Ye-in's assault rifle spat blue fire. Gwak Ji-cheol hastily threw up a wall of earth, but the magic bullets punched through it as lightly as if through paper.
"GRAAGH!"
Gwak Ji-cheol had always carried himself with the conviction that he, above all men, was a true man — but this once, the pain was so fierce his eyes swam with tears. He clamped down on himself somehow and bolted for the Sanctuary.
Rat-tat-tat!
"Gahk—khk!"
Stray magic bullets thudded into his back at intervals, but he gritted his teeth and kept running, throwing up earthen walls and bending trees along the way so that Seo Ye-in couldn't simply run him down.
Thus he fled in headlong chaos, until —
Vweee—!
Crystal linked with Sanctuary, and the charging began.
'Here.'
Gwak Ji-cheol halted and spun about. Keep fleeing like this and in the end his strength would only be pared away bit by bit until he dropped. Better to lean on his specialty — raise a fortress on this ground and dig in for a siege. That was the play with the higher odds.
Gwak Ji-cheol cast spell after spell in a steady, unbroken stream, and he barely finished them before Seo Ye-in all but caught up to him.
Double-Layer Wall
Reinforced Wall
Kuh-thoom!
He gathered the surrounding soil and gravel, ringing himself in a double wall and reinforcing it thicker and harder still. Seo Ye-in arrived hard on his heels and raked the stone rampart with sustained automatic fire.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
So potent was the magic bullets' destructive force that the first wall was pierced without ceremony. The second, however, mostly stopped them halfway, their speed dying out mid-penetration; even those that punched clean through arrived with force so diminished that taking the hit cost him next to nothing.
Relief flooded Gwak Ji-cheol — and in the same breath, both his eyes sharpened to points.
'Now the counterattack begins.'
Earth Cluster
Earth Cluster
Two spheres of earth floated up and began to spin faster and faster, spraying earthen rounds in wild volleys. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth — and a round for a round.
'I'll repay you in exactly the same coin.'
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Across a fixed stretch of ground, earthen rounds and magic bullets crossed midair. But the magic bullets broke against the wall, while the earthen rounds drew blood from Seo Ye-in at intervals.
Better still, the crystal was filling, slow and steady. From where Gwak Ji-cheol stood, all he had to do was hold out.
"..."
Whatever thought had struck her, Seo Ye-in abruptly released her grip on the assault rifle. At once the rifle came apart of its own accord and began reassembling itself, brisk and mechanical. Effectively disarmed, she took a few steps forward — then broke into a run, gathering speed as she came.
'What is that supposed to be?'
Puzzled by the eccentric display, Gwak Ji-cheol nonetheless fired earthen rounds on pure reflex.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
What he failed to notice was that Seo Ye-in's footfalls blurred, leaving afterimages in their wake.
Featherwalk
On light, springing steps, she evaded most of the earthen rounds streaking toward her.
Boing!
Beside Seo Ye-in, an adorable little cloud puffed into being, hovered at her side — and slurped down the earthen round she hadn't quite managed to dodge. The sight left Gwak Ji-cheol utterly dumbfounded.
'No — what is that supposed to be?'
He had no way of knowing that the fluffy little cloud was a skill conjured from a precious, precious A-Rank bracelet.
"Ngh...!"
Gwak Ji-cheol whipped his Earth Clusters into an even more frenzied spin. Seo Ye-in and her cloud wove between the rounds, closing the distance all the while — and in her head, she was replaying Gunslinger Adventure, the game they'd played in the commercial district over the weekend. Kim Ho's voice seemed to sound at her ear.
"Sidestep nice and soft."
"Softly."
Seo Ye-in's steps fell into an irregular rhythm — left, then right — slipping her clear of the earthen rounds. Desperate now, Gwak Ji-cheol drove his staff into the ground, and the earth rippled in swelling waves, bearing down on her.
Grrrrrumble...
Kim Ho's voice at her ear once more.
"Jump on the count of three. Three, two, one — jump."
"Jump."
Seo Ye-in hopped lightly over the rippling earth. In the next breath, dozens of earthen hands surged up from the ground, reaching to seize her.
"Hop right over them. Hop, hop."
"Hop."
Seo Ye-in trod lightly across the grasping hands, hopping and hopping again — then, with one final great leap, touched down soft as a sigh directly in front of the wall Gwak Ji-cheol had raised.
Only now did a question at last drift through Gwak Ji-cheol's mind.
'...Hold on. Why did she close in this far?'
What reason did a gunner have to come in this near?
The question answered itself almost at once — for the reassembly of the weapon in Seo Ye-in's hands had just completed, revealing its full, true form.
'...A shotgun?'
Gwak Ji-cheol's face froze solid.
"Uh — wait, hold on—"
KRA-KOOM—!
A whole heap of magic bullets burst outward in a spreading blast, collapsing the earthen wall in a single stroke — and hurling Gwak Ji-cheol behind it clean off his feet.
"GRAAAAAAAGH!!"
[119] The Support Ate It All